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michaelgiba

Not to mention everyone in the show has a British accent, even Gorbachev. Hilarious

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option A)

1. Have people speak perfect English, thus letting the actors shine, and not have the viewers have to read subtitles.

2. Have really good British/American actors do a fake (and probably bad) Russian accent, just for funsies

3. Hire actual Ukrainian/Russian actors, and use subtitles all the way.

Option 2 just seems stupid to me, the characters didn't speak in a foreign accent, they spoke in their own. Between Option 1 and 3, I prefer 1.

Option 3 can work really well. Narcos had folks speaking in Spanish with most of the world reading subtitles. As someone not from South America, it felt more authentic than if Escobar was speaking English throughout.

Of course, I'm glossing over the fact that the actor playing Escobar didn't sound like he was from Colombia at all, but that's not apparent to most of us non-Spanish speakers.

Arguably, the artistic choice was a strong for one Narcos because the foreignness of the majority of the setting to the viewpoint characters was central to the theme; that's arguably the opposite of what Chernobyl was aiming for.

Aren't you just drawing another arbitrary line?

It doesn't sound authentic in English, but its fine that they didn't speak in his native accent even though it wouldn't be authentic?

It's like how as ridiculous as it was to have Sean Connery in Hunt for Red October playing a Russian naval officer who talks like Sean Connery, it's much less ridiculous than Sean Connery playing a Russian officer who talks like Sean Connery faking a Russian accent.

No one so far has mentioned that actual Russians who learned English would be learning British English and not American so that 'accent' for them seems totally on point. Making people read subtitles would only serve to eliminate 75% of the audience.

What accent should they have instead given that in real life all persons mostly spoke Russian?

In a realistic movie they'd speak Russian/Ukrainian. I think wrong accents in that case would be ok because only Ukrainians would notice (it won't air in russia I'm guessing).

But Netflix probably wanted well known actors instead, and know lots of people dislike reading subtitles, so chose to use english, which is understandable in some ways. Myself I find documentary(-style) movies in the original language to be much more believable, and reading subtitles is a price well worth paying for e.g. "Der Untergang" and similar.

Der untergang is a german movie so they speak German.

So are you saying only ukranians should be allowed to make movies about Chernobyl?

So Americans can only make historical movies about events in America and only Scandinavians can make movies about Vikings?

> Der untergang is a german movie so they speak German.

Fair point. But I'm sure there are better examples where a film was made by people from country A, and set in country B using actors that speak B-language for realism.

> So are you saying only ukranians should be allowed to make movies about Chernobyl?

"Be allowed" I didn't say. I said it's an opportunity for extra realism you choose to use or not.

> So Americans can only make historical movies about events in America and only Scandinavians can make movies about Vikings?

I'm 100% sure that if Scandinavians did a movie about historical USA it would be in english. But it's beside the point. Again: it's just a choice whether you think the added trouble of finding actors speaking a language and having your audience read subtitles is worth it for the added realism.

It's not even a Netflix show..

Right, it's even in the title of the topic. Too late to edit I'm afraid.

(I'm sure Netflix reasons the same way for some series set in a foreign country)

The reason for this was explained in the companion podcast.

Curious, can you post the reason here? I have not yet watched the show.

Two reasons:

- The actors are British (with the exception of one main character who is Swedish and speaks with a Swedish accent) so it's easiest for them to just use their own accents.

- For whatever reasons, they didn't want to film it in Russian, with Russian actors and subtitles. And they felt that foreigners trying to feign Russian accents starts to get comical. So they made the decision to just let actors use their own accents (they also felt that American audiences wouldn't process it well if they used American accents).

- I watched the show and the accents are annoying for about ten minutes until you get used to them and cease to notice/care

Gorbachev is played by a Swedish-Danish actor as well.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1399770/

Dunno if this is the podcast response, but this is generally done in movies / TV when they have foreign characters speak English as a proxy for their native language. They almost never use American English unless the character is American; they’ll either use British English or a heavy accent.

Do you have a citation for this? I've never heard of using British English as a proxy for a foreign language. Instead, I always assumed it was because there are a lot of popular British actors, and if portraying non-English speakers, there's no good reason to "fake" an accent (so they just use their native accent), as was the case with "Chernobyl".

Most non-native English speakers around the world will be taught British rather than American English, so this 'accent' would be what you could expect from them in real life if they were to speak English.

I would also partly chalk it up to the ubiquity of American TV and movies. The midwestern accent is the norm for spoken English on TV, and most of those are set in America with American characters. If you want to say someone is from somewhere else but they’re all speaking a non-English language, speaking in a British accent sounds “foreign enough”.

See https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheQueensLatin

Sorry, I didn't have time to type a lengthy explanation earlier but basically what chadash wrote.

If this topic interests you I highly recommend "Conspiracy" which is also available on HBO Now. It's a depiction of the 1942 Wannsee Conference done with all UK actors.

You can watch that one and then watch the German version for comparison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URSNN5mnI2g

or the fact that they spoke English in the first place...

I dunno, that’s a decision you make for a mass-market show like this. If you have to watch subtitles and you’d likely have lost 3/4 of the audience before the end of the first episode. It makes the show more accessible.

Absolutely the right move IMO.

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